Good experiment...it will be fun to watch.

"Good experiment...it will be fun to watch."
babka

At this point it is more data gathering, the end result I'm hoping to uncover is how to avoid this set back if indeed it is a set back.

If I'm predicting the future then there must be a why in between.

Help if you can kick the horticultural can down the road.

The 3 plants purchased in Indy at the convention last summer that went thru this process have come back looking great and all three have made divisions. Purchased in late June I assumed they would do fine showing no ill effect, when they did I inquired of the seller what conditions they came from trying to understand what I saw, he would not say and finally would not take calls.

A couple of photos of those plants last year looking fine then all 3 lost most of their leaves then put out new growth and are doing fine this spring. This 1st photo is in August of last year vs May of this year so these plants will grow a lot before August.

Hey, Butch! Happy Hosta Spring to you!

Is that a 'White Feather' in the first photo?

Lisa, and to you as well, how are ALL of your plants doing?

The white looking plant is H.'Hanky Panky', sorry should have said! The green center was a very pale green later in the season but looks darker in the photo. I would like to be able to adjust colors more to what my eye sees. Hoping to get some lessons from a friend?

Here is a photo of, H.Quarter NoteÂ, one of those plants starting to grow again in 2 weeks. This doesnÂt show much but IÂm getting a timed lapsed set of photos.
Another plant H.ÂSentimental Journey (no photo) had started to bloom before I moved it outside and it is putting out new eyes but no new growth out of the center of the plant as H.ÂQuarter Note is. Another direction to study another day?

IÂve done a little research on why; plants make cells to deal with the light they are in.

When light strikes a leaf, the light is scattered and some of the reflected light is in the far-red spectrum. Plants have sensor pigments attuned to the far-red spectrum and will adjust their growth if they sense it. This is called "shade avoidance". Plants know that other plants are near them even though the other plants have not directly shaded them. A plant can sense the reflected far red lights from its neighbors so it speeds up its growth.

Plants make enough pigments, as they need to shield themselves from light according to their surroundings. Change the surroundings by putting them outside and the plants cannot react quickly enough. The interior components of the plant get damaged and simply loose necessary functions to grow. The new growth has time to adjust to the new surroundings, manufacturing enough pigments and are not harmed.

There are two classes of pigments. Mass pigments, which protect the plant from sunlight and sensor pigments, which gather information about the light environment and act as "eyes".

Interesting stuff, we need to be careful to move plants slowly from low light to high light. This would even be an important consideration when moving plants around outside, and important to know when buying plants the growing conditions they came from. During this stress period of adjustment they may succumb. Growers grow in many different conditions such as covered with shade cloth, I donÂt think one could look at a plant and know the growing conditions.

Soooo....for optimum growth, plants have to compete? They do better with others nearby?
And why is my queen Josephine looking so ratty? This is the 3rdyear in the spot...lots of arternoon sun, but Guardian Angel has adapted as had Royal Standard, Eternal Flame, Thunderbolt ( it's small but not burned), June and a couple of others....why is Josephing burninga t the edges? Shallow learning curve?
Linda C

Linda C put the question another way and I think you may be making a leap of reasoning that may not fit your yard. But please help me better understand the question, knowing it may be beyond my knowledge.

There is research that says more than one of a var causes others of the same var to do better. Now we say a garden with at least 7 do better, more to plants than can be easily understood. Sounds like a variety of plants with more than one each variety together works best. Mono culture has proven to cause an increase in pest and disease problems with many food or ornamental crops. Most of our mono culture hosta gardens are removed from other gardens so that may not effect us.

Most of what I try to work on is pretty simple and narrow, which suits my ability.

Where might I read more on this? Obviously not from my "Backyard Botany" or whatever it's called...
And do you espouse the theory....supposition....that plants "feel"...that is can communicate when something's wrong?
Way back in the depth of my memory is something about a study showing, by galvanic sensors, that plants "knew" when another of their members was being harmed....
But that still doesn't 'splain the ratty Queen J.

Linda C read a bit of this and ask for more, a little disjointed.

There are two classes of pigments. Mass pigments, which protect the plant
from sunlight and sensor pigments which gather information about the light
environment and act as "eyes".

I tried to look up "mass pigments" and "sensor pigments" from the index of
"Plant Physiology" 4th Edition but couldn't find them. There are entries for
"pigments" (p. 128) "sensor proteins" (p. 425), though.

On page 128, carotenoids is also called "accessory pigments".

"Carotenoids are found in all photosynthetic organisms, except for mutants
incapable of living outside the laboratory. Caratenoids are integral
constituents of the thylakoid membrane and are usually associated
initimately with many of the proteins that make up the photosynthetic
apparatus. The light absorbed by the caratenoids is transferred to
chlorophyll for photosynthesis; because of this role they are called
accessory pigments. Carotenoids also help protect the organism from damage
caused by light".

Does anyone have references to these pigments, namely "mass pigment" and
"sensor pigment" handy?

Mass pigments absorbed a relatively large amount of the light that a plant
receives. They are in relatively high concentrations in plant tissues and
they absorb potentially damaging photons (i.e. they 'screen' light away from
sensitive tissues) like anthocyanins and flavonoids, and by dissipating this
energy safely, they afford protection to other cell components.

Do the mass pigments really "'screen' light away from sensitive tissues like
anthocyanins and flavonoids" ?

On page 326 of "Plant Physiology", there is a section named "Anthocyanins
are colored flavonoids that attract animals". Followings are a couple of
paragraphs from that section:

"The colored pigments of plants are of two principal types: carotenoids and
flavonoids. Caretonoids, as we have already seen, are yellow orange and red
terpenoid compounds that also serve as accessory pigments in
photosynthesis( see Chapter 7). Flavonoids are phenolic compounds that
include a wide range of colored substances.

The most widespread group of pigmented flavonoids is the anthocyanins, which
are responsible for most of the red, pink, purple, and blue colors observed
in plant parts. By coloring flowers and fruits, the anthocyanins are vitally
important in attracting animals for pollination and seed dispersal."

I am sure someone with a copy of "Plant Physiology" 4th edition will shed
more lights onto these pigments (pun intended ;-)

Oh, BTW, I am citing the chapters, pages ... not to show off but just to
give references so that knowledgeable people like you can shed more lights
if needed.

Sometimes knowledgeable people cannot afford the time to excite the
pigments, or, they couldn't care less ;-)

So, the responsibility of not misinforming is resting squarely on the
shoulders of the original posters.

Nowadays, hard drive are available not in megabytes, not in gigabytes but in
terabytes, the archive servers tend to keep information as well as
misinformation on line for quite a while.

With the advance of WWW and the internet, the world is now facing the
information explosion as well as misinformation disasters!!

Besides "Caveat Emptor", should there also be "Caveat Lector(?)" ;-)

The sensor pigments tell the plant about its light environment. The sensor
pigments do many interesting things and one I find particularly interesting.
When light strikes a leaf, the light is scattered and some of the reflected
light is in the far red spectrum. Plants have sensor pigments attuned to the
far red spectrum and will adjust their growth if the sense it. This is
called "shade advoidance". Plants know that other plants are near them even
though the other plants have not directly shaded them. A plant can sense the
reflected far red lights from its neighbors so it speeds up its growth. It
was found the if you place one plant near another but still far away as not
to interfere with any lighting both will grow taller than if either were by
themselves. They "see" each other - (Ballaré et al., 1987).

I assume you are referring to this article:
"Early detection of neighbour plants by phytochrome perception of spectral
changes in reflected sunlight"

Well, they not only "see" each other, but they also compete with each other
;-)

"Far-Red Radiation Reflected from Adjacent Leaves: An Early Signal of
Competition in Plant Canopies"
(Ballaré et al., 1989)

BTW, page 425 is in chapter 17, "Phytochrome and Light Control of Plant
Development" (pp. 417-465) has this section, "Phytochrome is a
light-regulated protein kinase".

If he has time, maybe he will enlighten us if there are or there are not any
connections between "sensor pigments" and "protein kinase", "sensor
proteins".

> Fascinating things our little plants.

Linda C, if you can avoid anthropomorphic terms that seem to me to interfer with understanding the process. Yet, this sounds to me like "we feel pain" because electro chemical signals are sent to our brain then many more electro chemical processes tell us we hurt and cause all types of reactions. Is it different, don't know but for me all this is just fun to consider.

I'm looking for practical information one can use growing hosta. I want to come to understand how to handle new plants depending on how they were grown before we receive them.

You are right plants can't learn about new pathogens. The only way they "learn" is by the chance of genectic mutations which makes some plants more resistant to different pathogens and survive to pass on their resistance.

By definition an immune system is a collection of mechanisms within an organism that protects against disease by identifying and killing pathogens and tumor cells. Plants have that.

Plant don't have something like white blood cells that roam around and gobble up germs. Plant have more of a passive immune system. That doesn't mean that plants passively stand by if it detects an intruder. Plants react quite aggressively if they detect the presents of a pathogen.

Instead of having many white blood cells doing the work plants rely on each individual cell to do the job of cleaning up pathogens. Once one of the cells becomes infected it responds by creating a barrage of chemicals and sends out signals to other cells that it is under attack.

Plant cells recognizing the chemical surface of pathogens by a "pattern recognition" receptors on their membrane. When a pathogen touches the membrane the receptors are triggered and a signal is sent to genes responsible for producing chemicals that suppress or kill the microbe. If a microbe makes it past the membrane by the piercing of an insect's bite or a wound then there are proteins within the plant cells that can recognize the surface pattern of the pathogens and trigger a response as well. Once either the membrane of the cell or the proteins within the cell comes in contact pathogen then a real fight begins.

So you would think that plant pathogens wouldn't have much of a change at winning the battle. Pathogens have tricks up their sleeves too. Some P syringae strains can mimic plant hormones and induce the stomata to open to allow more bacteria to enter overwhelming the plant. Gibberella fujikuroi fungus can produce Gibberellin and cause bakanae or foolish seedling disease in rice which causes the rice plant to grow very tall. The tall rice gives a nice vantage point to drop fungus down on the small non-infected rice plants below. Many pathogens produce cytokinin and stop the death and dropping of infected leaves to promote further contamination. They keep their host alive in kind a of a science fiction sort of way.

If anyone is interested, there are links to two very long videos, (1 1/2 hours each), on the Home Plant Tissue Culture website by Dr. Bob Raabe, Professor Emeritus of plant pathology at UC Berkeley. I really enjoy listening to him. He's quite a guy who loves studying plant diseases and makes the subject somewhat entertaining. Click the "Links" link and look for Plant Disease part 1, 2 and 3.

You can also read this if you want to learn more about plant's immune system.
The plant immune system
Jonathan D. G. Jones & Jeffery L. Dangl
http://www.nature. com/nature/ journal/v444/ n7117/pdf/ nature05286. pdf

Digesting.....cogitating.....and soon to bed....
You seem to "scold" me for anthropromorphizing the 'behavior" of organisms that are incabable of behavior....
Sometimes it's easier to discuss actions and responses in terms of others we are more familiar with...
Had a dinner guest......too much Scotch, wine and food for rational discussion tonight....

I used to argue with Jim Hawes about using anthropomorphic terms saying it was easier to understand if we could put them into terms we are more familiar with. Then he would scold, which I didn't do BTW but sometimes it does make it more difficult to understand when our anthropomorphic terms do not in fact fit the situation.

I'm only suggesting you twist the paradigm prism you are viewing through looking for more colors.

And, I'm not the person to teach or scold anyone! If you like, learn along with me and teach what "I" don't see.

All this is like my toys, I take them out most days and play with them. Play along with me or we can write a play, remember "The right doesn't get it and the left gets it wrong".

A watch pot never boils, I want the answer now?

Nothing much to see yet if in fact we ever see anything, just a timed lapsed update.

Help with anything you may understand about what I'm doing?

4 are putting out new growth, the other 2 do not look dead just sitting there, oh well time marches on.

06-28-08 update

Here we are 8-10 weeks out from inside low light. You can't see but all have now finally started putting out new growth plus Sentimental Journey which the first to put up new growth. It has made many new eyes, the set back to the dominant growth may have caused this new eyes, dont know if Sentimental Journey tends to make a lot of divisions?

The study refered to by lindac in the above post is The Secret Life of Plants by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird. It caused quite a stir amoung the new age types when first published in 73. The idea that plants have feelings too must have been disturbing to vegetarians, assuming that they bought in to it. I am suprised that it is still in print.

"I am suprised that it is still in print."
ohiolibrarian

Thank you, I'm old and some of my references are also old. One that I read but can't find is a University of IL work suggesting that a healthy ecosystem required 7 varieties of plants growing together. I know my memory isn't wrong but I've not been able to find it. If you can help with any references on the things I talk about please do so even if I'm wrong?

07-12-08 update just because I'm checking every 2 weeks.

*no hostas were harmed in the making of this experiment* lol

It looks like they are bouncing back, slow but sure. Except bucket #2... did it just regress (hopefully to give you new eyes shooting out), or is she gone?

Bucket 2 was eaten off from the morning to the afternoon Sat. when I took the photo. Big fat caterpillar who has met his maker, it will grow back Im sure but another several weeks. I do think that asking the roots to make a bunch of flushes would drain the roots so next year will be weak.

I plan to leave them this fall regardless of size then take a few photos until June then repot according to size and growth habit. Might be fun to see a full 2 years of this?

Your experiment just proves what all gardeners have known forever. You take a plant from the shade or inside to the bright out of doors, you will fry it!
you are just showing up a progression in pictures and reason's why at the cellular level.
I have a pot of Brugmansia that was on my mostly shady deck. Chabby was showing more interest in it that I thought healthy, and it wasn't putting on new buds as the trees leafed out, so I moved it into the full sun garden in the middle of the yard, away from the nosey poodle.
It fried, never lost a leaf but looked awful....but that only lasted maybe 10 days and it began to put out new growth like crazy!
Now....do some species adjust to high light faster than others?
Linda C

"Your experiment just proves what all gardeners have known forever."
Linda C

I am known far and wide as a keen observer of the obvious!

"but that only lasted maybe 10 days and it began to put out new growth like crazy!
Now....do some species adjust to high light faster than others?"

I would guess so, in your Brugmansia's case I assume these new flushes come from existing roots, no photosynthesis going on with the foliage gone. Since it had been there for a while it surely had a nice root system.

I think if we kept doing this to a plant it would finally use up existing roots and give up.

I also assume differences between one specie and another.

Latest update and maybe the last until next year? They went south then made new flushes and seemed to have stopped.
For those who have actually kept up, the second from the left was eaten up by worm then flushed again to be eaten again, I've repotted it to see if I can save it.

At this point I think we've learned that moving plants from low light to high light may cause a loss of a years growth.

Interim conclusion, dont move plants from low to high light during the growing season unless you must.

So that is what is happening above the soil level. I wonder how the root systems have changed?

-Babka

So that is what is happening above the soil level. I wonder how the root systems have changed?
-Babka
An inappropriate question but not one I expected, in fact a good question.

Here is the root system of one, it made quite a few roots. I couldnt manage to get a shot to show that it only made roots on one side.
Note, also the size of the leaf from the earlier growth.
I judge that eyes on the other side were lost to this move to high light.
Not sure how to judge this since there isnt a side by side test plant.

I'm not convinced that the plants are going to lose a year's growth. And which year are you talking about--this year's growth or next years? I have done the same thing you did, only I used larger plants. I should take some pics. some of my leaves have gotten sun scalded, but the plants are continuing to flourish despite not looking as good as they would without the scald. But so far none of the leaves have actually died (I don't think--it's too dark to look tonight). Your statements about a healthy ecosystem needing 7 varieties of plants growing together for good health really intreiged me--I must go out and add more plants among my Hosta. How big an area are we talking about for these 7 plants to be in i.e. how close do they need to be?????? Thanks for all your fascinating info. Mary

babka, sorry I meant to say appropriate question NOT INAPPROPRIATE.

"And which year are you talking about--this year's growth or next years? "
greenthumbz

Surely we lose both, the leaves that were burned could not contribute to roots.
Lack of roots leads to lack of plant next year, maybe we are talking about a total of one year spread over 2 years.

"I should take some pics. some of my leaves have gotten sun scalded, but the plants are continuing to flourish despite not looking as good as they would without the scald."
Greenthumbz

Again, every lost leaf surely means lost roots.

"Your statements about a healthy ecosystem needing 7 varieties of plants growing together for good health really intrigued me--I must go out and add more plants among my Hosta."
Greenthumbz

Now add this piece to the puzzle, apparently as the roots of different plants intermingled if one plant needed P it took it from a root of another specie that had P and vice versa with other minerals.
Plus, they reasoned that 3 or more of the same specie planted together interacted to their benefit, dont know how close which may be specie specific. Notice every "natural" ecosystem has a wide variety of specie mixed unless we introduce an exotic plant that the ecosystem hasnt or cant adapt to such as kudzu in the south. Have you ever wondered if hosta will be the kudzu of the north shading out the wild flowers of a forest.

All this is so damned interesting it just makes me crazy thinking about it, so much to know so little time. BIG BUTT people who tell me they are bored get on my last nerve.

EO~ I hadn't caught your reply to my post in August. I had planned on saving past threads for winter reading, but I notice others are also going into the archives. Fall must be getting a little dull. :O) I find your experiments with light fastinating. As I noted, the plants I put in the sun were a lot larger than your little guys but I did it because that's where I had space. Some did get some burnt leaves. My main interest is how they react to the sun next year as I've heard they can adapt to sun. My Guacamole and Plantanagia suffered no leaf burn. I have noticed that the new growth on Fragrant Bouquet and Stained Glass is remaining unburnt--which I thot was encouraging until I thot about the sun's angle changing in late summer. August Moon and Striptease did not like full sun. Striptease got moved over into more shade, but I'm letting August Moon fight it out. Will let you know what happens next summer. Mary

Greenthumbz4mn

My work is fairly well controlled, general conclusions can be draw but different cultivars in the soil and different light conditions could give results all over the board. You point out the small differences in light, I say take my work with a little grain of salt.

AND, I will be very interested in your results. Enough data and we may be able to make useful rules.